Freecycle Highway

Monterey Road is the main cycling route between San Jose and Morgan Hill for those who avoid the meandering Coyote Creek Trail, and big parts of this street in San Jose are pretty chewed up.

The city of San Jose is experimenting with “cold in-place recycling” on Monterey Road. As with other repaving projects, big machines chew up the asphalt. Instead of trucking the rubble away, the milled surface is pulverized to a depth of four inches and loaded to a hopper in a train of machines. Additives and a cold asphalt emulsion are added to the recycled aggregate and rolled down to create a new road bed. Because aggregate is basically manufactured on the spot and the emulsion is not heated, DOTs can save about 30% from traditional repaving costs. An additional layer of hot mix asphalt can optionally be added on top of that.